Towards a taxonomy of common factors in psychotherapy-results of an expert survey.

Background: How change comes about is hotly debated in psychotherapy research. One camp considers 'non-specific' or 'common factors', shared by different therapy approaches, as essential, whereas researchers of the other camp consider specific techniques as the essential ingredients of change. This controversy, however, suffers from unclear terminology and logical inconsistencies.

Association between symptoms and quality of life in patients with schizophrenia: a pooled analysis of changes over time.

Quality of life is an important outcome in the treatment of patients with schizophrenia. It has been suggested that patients' quality of life ratings (referred to as subjective quality of life, SQOL) might be too heavily influenced by symptomatology to be a valid independent outcome criterion. There has been only limited evidence on the association of symptom change and changes in SQOL over time.

Factors influencing subjective quality of life in patients with schizophrenia and other mental disorders: a pooled analysis.

Subjective quality of life (SQOL) is an important outcome in the treatment of patients with schizophrenia. However, there is only limited evidence on factors influencing SQOL, and little is known about whether the same factors influence SQOL in patients with schizophrenia and other mental disorders. This study aimed to identify the factors associated with SQOL and test whether these factors are equally important in schizophrenia and other disorders.

Staff and patient perspectives on unmet need and therapeutic alliance in community mental health services.

Background: Therapeutic alliance between clinicians and their patients is important in community mental healthcare. It is unclear whether providing effective interventions influences therapeutic alliance.

Aims: To assess the impact of meeting previously unmet mental health needs on the therapeutic alliance between patients and clinicians.

Efficacy of psychological therapy in schizophrenia: conclusions from meta-analyses.

Over the past years, evidence for the efficacy of psychological therapies in schizophrenia has been summarized in a series of meta-analyses. The present contribution aims to provide a descriptive survey of the evidence for the efficacy of psychological therapies as derived from these meta-analyses and to supplement them by selected findings from an own recent meta-analysis. Relevant meta-analyses and randomized controlled trials were identified by searching several electronic databases and by hand searching of reference lists.

Reduced perception of the motion-induced blindness illusion in schizophrenia.

Motion-induced blindness (MIB) occurs when target stimuli are presented together with a moving distractor pattern. Most observers experience the targets disappearing and reappearing repeatedly for periods of up to several seconds. MIB can be viewed as a striking marker for the organization of cognitive functioning.